Matters of Life & Love – On The Coast 55+ – May 2023
Reader Question: “My partner is succumbing to some of the cliches of ageing. He can’t hear very well, and we often fight when conversations are broken and difficult to flow easily. He’s tired and less virile. I know I should be compassionate and caring but I find it annoying and I get angry at him. I feel so ashamed of my response. How do I find a better way?”
Dearly beloved.
To quote my dearly departed father-in-law, “this ageing business is no good”, and yet also, he would say, “but the alternative is not preferable”. As hard and confronting as it is, getting older, for the most part, is a privilege only the dying and dead can give proper perspective on.
Some of us will do it with less difficulty than others, and with better health and capacity than others. For as long as we keep doing laps around the sun, we are all going to age and face change and challenge.
Unfortunately, ageing is a ripe field for many cliches – and many jokes. Being twelve years younger than my husband, I’ve worn out the joke that we are never in the same decade and have maybe made too much fun of the fact that he will mark certain ageing milestones before me. And then I hit menopause. And then I had a few health scares myself. And now with my own ageing confronting me, it all seems less funny, and I have given some sheepish apologies of late to the insensitivities I had.
I know now that when the cliche becomes a real and lived experience, it is no longer a cliché or funny, but an invitation to ‘get real and get creative and get compassionate’. It’s pointless to wage war with time.
What I mean by that is to move beyond seeing ageing as a cliché – which is a reductive explanation for what is going on – and instead, accept some things have changed and deal with the reality of what is happening. Identify and acknowledge what the changes are and the effect on you, and your partner, and your relationship, and adapt to find a way to better it together.
The first thing to do is to attend to the feelings and then to own them. Don’t blame them on the other. This is not to say that you are not allowed the feelings – because you are! You can, and will, feel all sorts of big and hard feelings. It’s understanding them and knowing HOW you do your feelings that matters.
Anger is often a first and easy ‘go to’ feeling, but it can often be the outer shell feeling to something that is more nuanced when you reflect more deeply. In my coaching/therapy work, I share this image of Anger as a nut that has a hard, outer shell protecting a lot of other different, perhaps more vulnerable feelings inside it, such as – fear, anxiety, confusion, shame, guilt, sadness, grief, embarrassment, injustice, rejection, loneliness….and more. And by the way, shame can sometimes be an expression of anger but directing it back towards yourself.
When you know and share feeling(s) and understand what they are trying to tell you – like what you need – then you have a lot more information and data and understanding to ask for what you want. You can sidestep guilt and shame and blame and move into care and compassion.
And move onto better clichés – like – with age comes wisdom 😊
Much love
Sarah x
Sarah Tolmie – Life & Love: Sarah is a marriage therapist, life & love and relationship coach, end-of-life consultant, an independent and bespoke funeral director and holistic celebrant. She provides holistic care, mentoring, guidance, healing and transformation for individuals, couples and families at their most important times of life & love – at end-of-life, in love & relationship, and in ritual and celebration. Sarah has a series of online courses – “Creating a Miracle Marriage. Online Course for Couples” and “How do you feel? Using the intelligence of our emotions to heal and be whole in Life & Love and “Landscapes of Life & Love and Loss. Traversing the pathways of dying, death and grief”. To find out more, visit www.sarahtolmie.com.au.
